Backbone 409 happened in Calafou, near Barcelona in early June 2014.
Started as a small meeting, it finally drew little less than 150 practitioners
for two days of intensive conversations sometimes happening in 4 venues
consecutively. The high response and the good lineup of local and international
initiatives showed the need for hacker spaces where
anti-capitalist politics is the baseline.

The first thing participants highlighted was the good atmosphere. Many came a
week before to help building up for the conference and installed infrastructure
such as toilets, windows, electricity, lighting, and of course Internet. It was
evident that autonomous infrastructures are needed and we have to construct them
from the ground up. This contributed to the feeling of ownership of the venue
and collaboration connected participants.

The meeting was an opportunity to bridge Spanish and English speaking circuits
of techno-activists, enabled by the superb simultaneous interpretation of the
Coati collective and their gear. This was not fully exploited but still many
links were established. A highlight was the scene reports on the past and
present from Italy, Netherlands, Hungary, Catalonia, Germany, and Mexico (in
order of appearance).

Developers of privacy-oriented operating systems like Freepto, Subgraph OS
and Tails met each other and their (potential) users, discussing features to
be adopted from each others’ codebases. In addition to North European and North
American projects, operators of autonomous servers such as Espora (Mexico) and
Espiv (Greece) exchanged experiences and best practices. Sarava (Brazil)
tech collective reported on the seizure of their server and a 24 hour
“cryptorave” with 2000 attendants organised in São Paolo. The keysigning party
(a.k.a. certification meeting) was surrounded by much debate so that best
practices and recommended configuration files received major updates, while
alternatives to OpenPGP like PBP were proposed.

The roundtables on the four focus topics (resilient
hosting, decentralised
architectures, project
sustainability, and usable
cryptography) offered an overview with the
participation of 5-6 representatives of relevant projects and a moderator. These
were good for introducing the major discussions and actors in the problem space
but usually not enough to really push the discussions to a new level. We hope
that once the topics are identified, such discussions will evolve during the
next conferences like Interference and FSCONS, as well as the various
hackmeetings. Other program points included a look at the relationship between
the tech industry and the human geography of cities (in correspondence with the
controversy about Google buses), an outdoor survivor workshop, a reading of the
Liquid Surveillance book, project presentations and many more. Finally, in
terms of developing the infrastructure of the global network, the idea of
Virtual Internet Exchange Points was proposed as a peering space for VPN
providers.

Since Calafou is in the middle of the forest, accommodation was provided on-site
(campsite and dormitory) and food was prepared with the help of participants.
On the upside, the killer application of the catering was a donation-based
OpenWRT cocktail bar which should be replicated in other meetings. On the
downside, we ran out of Club Mate on the second day because of logistical
problems. Please send us more documentation.

Backbone 409 has adopted a policy against harassment in order to provide a safe experience for all people. Therefore, Backbone 409 will not tolerate any form of harassment or disrespect to any participants of the event. Harassment include offensive comments based on gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, physical appearance, disability, ethnicity, religion and social economic condition, including intimidation, persecution, photographs or video, interruption or disruption of talks and events, unwanted physical contact. People whose
behavior violates these policy will be warned and must immediately cease the offensive behavior, or they will have to leave the event. If you have experienced harassment, please contact one of the BB409 organizers, if you don't know who they are, go to the infopoint.

Backbone 409 is committed to making the space as accessible as possible. If there is something that the organizers can do to help make the space accessible for you, please contact one of the BB409 organizers.

Backbone 409 is a Do It Yourself, non-commercial event. We are in the middle of the forest so we will have food and drinks available to participants. Food tickets can be bought at the infopoint, so go there when you arrive. The prices are the following:

3€ breakfast

6€ lunch

6€ dinner

Therefore food for one day is 15€ and for the two days of the meeting 30€. Friday dinner will work too. Please keep these in mind when you are preparing to come, and do not rely on the ATM in the village – bring cash! You are of course also welcome to bring your own food and drinks or buy them in the nearby village.

If you have any doubts or special needs, please get in contact with the Backbone409 organization team.

We are working hard to prepare everything and looking forward to an awesome time with you.

Backbone 409 is closing in so we are posting a short status update. Please
propagate to all who you know are coming. Don't forget to register (or at
least drop us an email otherwise you will be hungry and without a
roof at the event. We don't often host so many geeks at the same time, so please
help us scale our infrastructure and bring with you:

at least a mat and a sleeping bag and bring a tent if you can (as some
people have already arrived, mattresses are largely occupied now and there
are few places left in the dormitories)

forks, spoons, knives

ethernet cables

power strips

switches

beamers

your pirate content to share

torch or front light

insect repellent

markers, whiteboard markers, pens, post-its, etc.

sunscreen

Please don't bring your dog, as we have a lot of animals in Calafou already and
it would surely be a source of conflict during the meeting.

The La Responsable social center, in Garraf, 35 km South from
Calafou, home of the Don't Panic
hacklab and the Guifilab center of its county is under
eviction threat.

Backbone 409 shows solidarity with the social center and invites you to Days of
Resistance in La Responsable before the Backbone week-end, with roundtables and
activities starting from Sunday 8 to Friday 13, day on which we will celebrate
our second birthday. Please notify your arrival to laresponsable@marsupi.org.

Here is a first list of projects who confirmed their presence at Backbone
409. We are very proud of having all of them on board!

We believe they represent an interesting mix of both international and local
projects, well established projects as well as ideas on the rise, working on very
diverse types of infrastructures, all strongly committed to support grassroots
activism.